October 31, 2005 - Monday
The last couple of years we've taken the boys Trick or Treating to just the 7-10 houses near us on our street. It's enough walking and plenty of candy and since we don't live in a "development" there really aren't very many kids that come around to our house. When we've been home on Halloween over the last five years there has never been more than one or two groups of kids and none for the last couple of years. And we've learned, it's been the same for the other houses that we go to. They all say they used to have more kids come by, but now they don't, probably because of the a new development that was built up the road a few years ago. So, Harry and Jeremy (Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader) have been their only regulars lately and since everybody inevitably starts with a big bowl of candy just in cause, they always end up encouraging our boys to take several pieces each. At one house, the mother of the boys' first babysitter in town actually made each of them a special plastic pumpkin filled with candy. We went there late and she said she was starting to worry we wouldn't come. Of course for us, the boys' mother and me, Halloween has turned into a wonderful evening of socializing with our neighbors.

Surely I should have taken a picture of it, but this afternoon I helped the boys turn Jeremy's little pumpkin from the farmstand into a jack-o-lantern. It's the kid of thing that parents and children have done thousands of times, but it was still an extremely personal moment for me and my boys. There we were in the kitchen doing something exciting together, cutting with a big knife, feeling the gooey insides of the pumpkin, making eyes and a mouth with "fangs," and, OK here we go, having the boys tell me it was cool and that I was the greatest. Can't beat that for bonding moments. I guess a picture wouldn't do that justice.


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